oppression, expand with all their native buoyancy ; and old age, instead of being querulous and crusty, still shows some traces of the glee and gladness of youth. The able-bodied and generous-minded workman, diffusing his benevolent regard to both old and young, becomes, like the firm and stately oak, that at once shelters the venerable tree beside it from the fury of the hurricane, and rears to strength and maturity the tender sapling under its grateful shade.

CHAPTER IV.

"A FAIR DAY'S WAGE FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK."

Depend upon it, the interests of classes too often contrasted are identical, and it is only ignorance which prevents their uniting for each other's advantage. To dispel that ignorance, to show how man can help man, ought to be the aim of every philanthropic person."-Prince Consort's Speeches.

seem to be about as far "A fair day's wage for another formula for exevery one grants it in

THAT the labourer is worthy of his hire no one can or dares to deny; but what the hire is of which he is worthy, or on what principle the amount of it is to be settled, is one of those questions which of late years especially have been discussed almost ad infinitum, and on which we from a settlement as ever. a fair day's work," is just pressing the same thing; general terms; but when you grapple with the practical question, what is a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, one man says one thing, and another, another; and particularly, the worker of the work and the payer of the wage entertain very different opinions. Political economy has its ready answer— and there is at least one great merit in that answer

-its clearness and conciseness: a fair day's wage for a fair day's work is just what it will bring in the market; it is the auction value of it; the smallest amount at which workmen will consent to sell their labour, and the largest which employers will consent to pay for it. Wages, we are told, must depend on the law of supply and demand. When work is plentiful and hands are few, wages must and will be high; when work is scarce and hands are plentiful, wages must and will be low. This, according to Political Economy, is the great law of nature, and it should be left to settle the question. As a general prin

The law of supply

ciple, this is doubtless correct. and demand must be the great regulator of wages. Any violent or artificial interference with this rule must in the end defeat its object, and lead to mischief. But it is still a question whether the law of supply and demand is a purely self-regulating one, whether it can be trusted to adjust itself, or whether it may not require at times a little artificial pressure -the kind of pressure which is supplied by combinations and strikes to determine what the relation of demand to supply is at the time, what is the highest sum that employers can give, and the lowest that workmen will accept?

For our own part, we have a strong pre-disposition to view with favour any fair and feasible plan

of increasing the earnings of workmen. Many, no doubt, receive very handsome remuneration; but on the other hand, many are underpaid, and have not a sufficient average share of the good things with which God has blessed the community. We say this, well remembering that all cannot be ladies and gentlemen; all cannot attain to a refined and easy 'mode of life; the vast majority must continue to be hard workers, content with mere food and raiment, hewers of wood and drawers of water. This is the inexorable law of Providence, and it were about as wise to try to change the law of gravitation as to interfere with this. Nor do we forget what an immense amount of the aggregate wages of workmen is wasted, and how much better it would be for tens of thousands of them, who lavish their earnings on drink, if they were far poorer than they are. But what we look to is this. The present average wages of many trades are barely sufficient to enable even steady and sober men, who waste nothing, and who have families dependent on them, to live with a due regard to their health, physical and moral. For example, no family where there are sons and daughters past the age of ten or twelve can be brought up as they ought to be, in a house having fewer than three sleeping apartments, one for the parents, one for the sons, and one for the daughters. Such

houses are, no doubt, as we shall show afterwards, within the reach of the better paid class of skilled workmen, but they are beyond the reach of a great many. Again, the present circumstances of workmen in time of sickness are often very deplorable. Usually, there is no possibility of procuring for the sick one in a workman's family, the attention, the seclusion, the comforts which are required. Hospitals are a great blessing, and do a world of good; but they are little more than secondclass substitutes for a more natural method; for, doubtless, it is the law of nature that the mother should nurse her own sick child, and that the wife or daughter should minister at the sickbed of her husband or her father. Again, there is a very critical time in the history of large families, apt to tell very seriously upon the health and spirits of the mother, when the children are young and earning nothing, when the family wants demand a great expenditure of money and toil and attention; the mother's own health is perhaps delicate; her spirit gets oppressed by the load; perhaps she loses selfcontrol, and everything falls into confusion. If her means were more ample, and she could procure some assistance, this crisis might be got over more safely. It is the same scarcity of means that creates the temptation to send out children to work when mere